


Celebration Guns

by starlurker



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-10
Updated: 2010-03-10
Packaged: 2017-10-07 20:43:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/69059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlurker/pseuds/starlurker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brad and his rituals</p>
            </blockquote>





	Celebration Guns

Brad has certain rituals after coming home from deployment, because missions were almost always a clusterfuck that needed the rationality of routine afterwards to make sense. It's usually composed of the following:

1) a long, hot shower that practically sterilizes him like a medical instrument;

2) a huge pizza loaded with meat and cheese with a six-pack of beer;

3) a hooker with good oral skills.

The shower stall in Brad's house is fitted with the best showerhead in existence. It sent strong, pulsing blasts of water that scoured his flesh clean of dirt, grime and the ugly stench of misery, which no one ever believed had an actual smell. It did though, like old blood and musty sheets, and it clung for days. Brad usually stayed until his hot water ran out, until the water turned cold and shocked him out the haze of steam and fatigue.

He visited his family almost as an afterthought sometimes. He loved them dearly, and would die for them in a heartbeat, but that never made it easy to talk to them. Common ground had eroded – Iraq had stripped away the things that living in the US made universal.

Captain Fick required special rules. He tried not to give that too much thought.

***

The only change is the hooker's given name – he doesn't like pretend names (pays a little extra for that little bit of truth when necessary in fact) and has even less appetite for calling women girl, baby, woman, bitch or whore as he's fucking them.

Darla had smooth, supple thighs and a truly talented mouth. She had dark grey eyes and actually seemed to enjoy parts of it. "Baby, I'm going to treat you so good," she cooed in her smoker's voice. She didn't ask any questions apart from what he wanted, and offered her astonishing flexibility as a nice extra. She did a split when she went on top of him, and Brad nearly blacked out from how fucking hot that was. He gave her fifty dollars more than the agreed upon price; they were both professionals who understood the value of an unwanted job that was still done well.

Marlena was loud and boisterous. She had hair straight from the '80s, teased and sprayed all to hell, a Dolly Parton with a smaller rack and the same country charm. She had gotten attached and pretended that she didn't, while Brad pretended he liked her more than he actually did. He visited her five times after OIF, and knew he had to stop when he felt her long fingernails stroking his back in long, leisurely strokes after fucking. He left some extra money on their last night, feeling bad enough to do so but certainly not enough to do more.

Nadia was after England, even though that wasn't strictly a deployment per se. He approached her in the low-rent brothel the minute he saw her and paid for the night. They did everything they could do that night, some of it twice. She was twirling her long strawberry blonde hair with her index finger, sloppily caught unaware but being really sweet and apologetic afterwards, her pale skin flushing with embarrassment, her freckles becoming more pronounced. He had paid enough for the night and didn't bother leaving a tip because he thought that she would understand.

***

The pizza and the beer had to be shared with guys.

"Well motherfucker," Ray had said after OIF 1, as he slobbered over his Domino's slice with pepperoni and hot Italian sausage. "I didn't think you of all people would have these things to do when you come home. It's practically a religion."

Brad put a hand on top of the remaining pizza slices to gauge the heat and wondered whether it was worth it to slap Ray in the face with one, but decided against it and settled for whacking the back of Ray's head instead. Ray had taken it with good grace (or as close to it as he could get).

"Let me guess," Ray continued. "You also get on your knees and pray to this pagan homecoming god after your first night and thank him for preserving your fucking ass in hostile conditions, then you volunteer at a homeless shelter as a gesture of faith in – what the fuck's his name...Harley? Harley is your pagan god. Then you go on your bike and spread the word and have a sidecar of hookers that you throw in as incentive."

"I don't know why I thought you'd be different without Ripped Fuel and stress," Brad said.

"Don't really know why either. Hasn't been that long though. Some of that shit is probably retroactively circulating now or something." Ray took a huge bite and grinned, mozzarella hanging out the corner of his mouth.

Brad had spoken to Poke after one of his tours – he can't quite remember which, as his conversations with Poke have attained a comfortable blurring in his head. Brad had rung Poke's doorbell with a large pizza in one hand and a six-pack in the other.

"Well motherfucker," Poke said, and Brad had a brief feeling of déjà vu. "Making Harley's rounds already?"

"Ray's a fucking idiot." Ray's iTunes account would be filled with only the finest musical stylings of Celine Dion and Barbra Streisand after that night.

"You're only realizing this now? Come in. You came at a good time, my wife and kids are out."

After laying waste to the pizza and the beer, they went to Poke's basement with some weed. Poke's wife pointedly cleared her throat at the top of the stairs when she got home and said, "This door better stay shut and that smell better not make its way up here or I will castrate you with rusty pliers while you sleep."

"No wonder you love her," Brad said.

Poke beamed with pride. "I have a smoke absorber in here. We're good."

"You're fucking whipped."

"No, I'm fucking sane. Besides, don't want my kids to become potheads – gotta set a good example and remove the evidence."

Brad raised an eyebrow. Poke raised one back. "Don't make me have to go rant about the injustice of weed being illegal, Iceman. Fucking typical of the establishment to declare weed criminal." Poke took a deep inhale and sighed.

"Wouldn't dream of it," Brad said, and snatched the joint from Poke's hand.

After England, he somehow, rather strangely, found himself in a pizza place with Evan "Don't Call Me Q-Tip Anymore" Stafford, who was exactly as Brad remembered him. After a few painful attempts at conversation outside of war, they realized they had nothing in common except their respective tours. Unlike conversations with civilians though, their tours were more than enough – they were like brothers who had a good time during the family gatherings and then went off to live very separate lives. Their conversation inevitably got around to COs past.

"Has anyone heard from Captain Fick?" Stafford asked.

"We e-mail sometimes. He's good, from what I can remember."

"Changing the world?" Stafford flicked off a piece of meat that had strayed on to his resolutely cheese-only pizza slice.

"More like falling in line with the fucking Communists."

"You really think that?"

"Not really, no." Brad gulped down his beer.

"Thought it didn't seem like the LT."

"Some people don't change after all." Brad was still shocked by that.

"Fuck, some people could use it though."

"Yeah." The conversation petered out after that, but Brad thought it was still good to see him.

***

After England went something like this:

_"This is Nate Fick. Leave a message."_

"It's Brad. Guess I missed you this time. Catch you later." He didn't call back until about two weeks and made sure it was a weird time when he called, but he knew that Nate had called at least three times in that time. Nate never left a message though.

After the second trip to Iraq, Brad sent an e-mail:

_Things never change. People are always fucking idiots, except in those rare times when they're not. Same heat, same sand, same desert. What the fuck is wrong with people, seriously? Did we struggle all this way to get so fucking lazy that we don't even fight properly anymore? What the fuck?_

Nate replied simply, tersely: _Come here. Or let me go there. Goddamn pick already._

Brad didn't.

After God knows what felt like Iraq redux a couple of hundred times, Brad went home and found Nate sitting outside his door. Nate didn't waste any time.

"I met someone."

"Good for you." Brad could feel it in a distant way, something cracking like a chunk of glacier slipping, adrift in the sea.

"That's it?" Nate laughed in disbelief. "You jerk me around, leave weird messages and e-mails for fucking years and never let me get a word in edgewise or ignore everything else, and that's all you have to say?"

"I need a shower." Brad winced at how that came out.

"Fuck you too, Brad."

Brad turned away from Nate. Nate's pale skin, those insanely green eyes, the curve of his bottom lip were too much even in the best of times. He didn't see the punch until after it hit, and he was already on the floor with his lip bleeding when he looked up and saw Nate, who looked more sad than angry, his hands forming fists only to relax, only to form another fist.

"Have a good life, Brad." Nate's bottom lip quivered briefly. He walked away quickly, his shoes making soft shushing sounds as they tread on grass. Brad closed his eyes and wished he was a stronger, better man, then he got up without looking back, unlocked his door, went up the stairs and had the shower he needed so desperately.

He would call Doc Bryan to set something up the next day. Maybe he'd go to Vegas and forget himself between a woman's legs for a weekend.

***

Brad remembered this clearly – it was after he got back from England and had actually spoken to Nate despite his best intentions. He went to the airline and changed his flight plan. When he landed in Boston, he got into the first cab he saw before he could give any thought to what he was doing. Nate had opened the door, said "We'll skip the politeness and pleasantries for later, okay?" with a desperate edge to his voice and kissed him. Sloppy, dirty kisses, fumbling kisses, quick bites as he and Nate stumbled through various hallways to land on Nate's bed.

"I want to suck your cock," Nate had said, "and I want you to suck mine." Brad could only nod helplessly as he took off his clothes.

He put all his effort in remaining composed as Nate sucked his cock. He cursed Nate in for being so much fucking better at this, as they curled into each other like parentheses, Nate's head bobbing back and forth with intent and skill, while Brad can only lick Nate's cock in half-hearted measures, driven to distraction.

"You'll love 69ing," Nate had said, and he has yet to lead Brad wrong. Brad shook his head and focused on Nate's cock in front of him, sucked on the head and licked at the slit and was doing pretty well until Nate moaned obscenely around Brad's cock and that was the end of it. He couldn't even warn Nate, so he just rolled on to his back and came and came and came.

"Fuck," Brad gasped. "Motherfucking fuck."

Nate sat up, his cock still hard. He looked like every wet dream Brad denied having even to himself when he was sixteen.

"You OK?" Nate asked. A teasing eyebrow raised, a slight smirk coming out. His mouth was swollen and red. His cock was still hard, and Brad's mouth watered at the sight of it.

"Fuck you," he managed to say. With all that Brad has seen and heard and experienced, being someone who would crawl through broken glass to suck Nate's cock was not something he would have predicted for himself.

"Tomorrow," Nate said. "Tonight, I want your mouth." Nate got up and sat on Brad's chest, moving up until his cock is in line with Brad's lips, and Brad found the energy to raise his head and give Nate what was probably a pretty bad blowjob. Nate didn't seem to care though – he just moaned and writhed and said how good Brad was, which was a fucking lie.

"Jesus Christ," Nate said. He moved back to kiss Brad, let out a 'mmmph' as he came while they kissed, but each kiss got slower, sweeter and sleepier until Brad slipped into a contented haze in between soft bites.

***

On his last visit to his family, his dad had asked if he had anyone special in his life. "You're not getting any younger, son," his dad said. "Married life is good to have when you can still do all the things you want to do."

"I did have someone," Brad said, "but I couldn't make it work. Long distance. Liberal."

"That's too bad," his dad said, all gentle understanding and sympathy. "Sounded like your mom there for a second." His father chuckled – he always thought the best of him, even after all this time. His family didn't really know him at all anymore, if they could still think that.

For a moment, Brad thought of a different world where he could say what he wanted to say, but he lived in this one, and this one had rules. Brad was a good soldier, a good Republican and a good son, so he said "She was too good for me anyway."

END


End file.
